Updates on Buck's life with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma Cancer

Another Happy Father’s Day

6-14-2014 – Father’s Day is tomorrow, and I’m happy to be around for it!

Recent medical stuff for me included a PET scan about a week ago, and then a followup with the oncologist a week later to review the results of it and LAB work on my blood. The short story is that everything went great. The PET scan was clear and the LAB work showed that I’m just a little anemic, which is pretty much always the case with me.

I’ve been having a bit of a mucous problem for the past couple of weeks now, but there’s a lot of that going around and folks are saying that it’s due to all the pollen we’re having this year. In any case, I’ve been taking Mucinex DM for it and that seems to be holding it in check pretty well. When it wears off, I’m coughing up big, green goobers, so I take another one, which is a couple times per day. The oncologist said that if it keeps up I should go see a regular doctor about it.

I’ve lost about 16 pounds lately too, but that’s because I’ve been eating less and exercising more. With winter over, I’ve been spending a lot of my time outdoors, and because I’m a GREAT dad and grandpa, and because it gives me something to play with, I decided to build my grandkids a tree house/play structure. That’s what’s been giving me the exercise as I build it, and it’s a lot of fun for me too.

I don’t have the energy or stamina I did pre-cancer + treatments + now the Imbruvica, so it’s been slower going than I’d like, as I take pretty frequent breaks, but like the tortoise in the race, I’ll get there. It’s been just over 2 weeks on the project so far, and with some work and good weather, I may see completion in another week, or two at the most.

My 4 year old granddaughter Gracie has been helping as much as a 4 year old can, and she’s getting pretty good at hammering in roofing nails and knowing what tools do what and what their names are and stuff like that. Here she is:

My oncologist says that with everything looking good, she doesn’t need to see me for another 4 months. She also said we don’t really need to do a PET scan every time, so next time we’ll just do a CAT scan instead. Both were scheduled as follows:

Preparation for the CT scan is easy; Just don’t eat or drink anything for 4 hours prior to the scan.

So, that’s about it for now. For a guy with an incurable cancer going on 13 years so far, I’m looking pretty healthy by medical standards and feeling pretty good! I’m getting my exercise, having fun and losing some undesired weight in the process.